访谈录 2008-09-01&09-03 上帝,请再给我一个月的“有声世界”

Now to the inspiring story of a young woman faced with a difficult diagnosis 1. The surgery she needed to save her life would cause her to lose her hearing forever. So how would you spend your last days being able to hear the world? Jessica Stone did it with bravery and grace.

 taste it, taste it, love’s so sweet. And all of it was lost on me

Imagine a symphony of sounds that make up your life, your favorite song, your family's laughter, your dog. Now imagine counting down the weeks, days, hours until every sound disappears.

Really, at a loss for emotion, freak out, actually. To be very blunt, freak out.

Surgery has been a fact of life for 23-year-old Jessica Stone since she was a little girl. But it wasn't until she was 15 that doctors were able to put a name to her disease neurofibromatosis, a rare genetic 2 disorder 3 that causes benign 4 tumors to grow along her nervous system.

The diagnosis was, you know, pretty much a kick in the gut 6.

Over the years Jessica has had more than 20 surgeries to remove the tumors.

Since this whole thing started eight years ago, I wanna crawl up, a lot of days and cry and I can't because, I can't do it because she doesn't do it.

Her humor has always found ways to make her through and she is just a beautiful person inside and out.

She'd already lost the hearing in her left ear and then this went her devastating 7 news, there is a tumor 5 pressing against her brainstem that has to come out. And the operation that will heal her will also leave her deaf.

You do a surgery that will leave you completely deaf or you take the risk of just stroking one day and dying. And now that was her choice.

The deafness thing, I will only, I will find some funky 8, corky way to make it work for me, to, you know be the, the person in the family that just like, wow, you know, she's deaf but she just does it so well!

Today marks thirty days until my big surgery. . .

And so in the month before surgery, Jessica sets out to record the sounds that make up her world.

Dig, doggy, dig a hole...

Playing her bongos, making her morning smoothy. The hope is one day these images will remind her of the sounds she can no longer hear.

Well it's hard to change the way you lose if you think you never won.

She practices her sign language by learning to sign her favorite song "All We Are" by Matt Nathanson. Just three weeks before surgery she gets to meet Nathanson at his concert, the last one she will ever hear.

On one hand it's great to meet the person. On the other hand, you know, I am never gonna to hear him sing again. So you know, it was a definitely emotional thing last night.

With one week left she takes in the gentle roar of the wind and waves of the beach.

Oh, it's gorgeous, listen to those waves. .

And then all too soon the day of surgery is here. It has been a long 30 days and, yeah, very long very hard.

We talked and laughed and all kinds of things the night before, we wanted to get every minute in and you know nobody wanted to go to bed and then all of a sudden it's 6 a. m. and you're in the hospital.

That morning in the hospital, tense emotional moments, one last conversation.

I love you.

A final "I love you" and listening one last time to her favorite song as she is wheeled into the operating room.

In the end, the words won't matter.

After 13 hours of surgery relief, doctors tell Jessica's family the tumor is out and she is doing well.

The next morning the new reality -- Jessica's first conversation without sound